It's not just college kids, folks. Unless the party purges the Crazy Train, they're not going to get my vote either, and I'm in my early 40s. At this point, it's not just the social issues, but how economic issues are used to further those social issues, and how the refusal to contemplate prudent fiscal policy is draining the nation's coffers and impacting growth and opportunity. The party isn't just out of touch, the leadership is actively promoting an agenda that is curtailing the nation's future.

Not that a lot Libertarians are any better. The typical Libertarian candidate today promotes an agenda that is naught but a brand of NeoFeudalism that is even worse than their Republican counterparts. I had hopes for the Modern Whigs, but the TEA Party nonsense pretty much ate up their momentum, which is exactly what it was designed to do. The sad fact is, many Libertarians are just Republicans who want to smoke pot, and that is not the basis for real progress. We need better thinking, not just the same old, with a few whistles and bells to draw in the unwary...

hubiestubert:At this point, it's not just the social issues, but how economic issues are used to further those social issues, and how the refusal to contemplate prudent fiscal policy is draining the nation's coffers and impacting growth and opportunity. The party isn't just out of touch, the leadership is actively promoting an agenda that is curtailing the nation's future.

hubiestubert:It's not just college kids, folks. Unless the party purges the Crazy Train, they're not going to get my vote either, and I'm in my early 40s. At this point, it's not just the social issues, but how economic issues are used to further those social issues, and how the refusal to contemplate prudent fiscal policy is draining the nation's coffers and impacting growth and opportunity. The party isn't just out of touch, the leadership is actively promoting an agenda that is curtailing the nation's future.

hubiestubert:It's not just college kids, folks. Unless the party purges the Crazy Train, they're not going to get my vote either, and I'm in my early 40s. At this point, it's not just the social issues, but how economic issues are used to further those social issues, and how the refusal to contemplate prudent fiscal policy is draining the nation's coffers and impacting growth and opportunity. The party isn't just out of touch, the leadership is actively promoting an agenda that is curtailing the nation's future.

Not that a lot Libertarians are any better. The typical Libertarian candidate today promotes an agenda that is naught but a brand of NeoFeudalism that is even worse than their Republican counterparts. I had hopes for the Modern Whigs, but the TEA Party nonsense pretty much ate up their momentum, which is exactly what it was designed to do. The sad fact is, many Libertarians are just Republicans who want to smoke pot, and that is not the basis for real progress. We need better thinking, not just the same old, with a few whistles and bells to draw in the unwary...

Dancin_In_Anson:hubiestubert: At this point, it's not just the social issues, but how economic issues are used to further those social issues, and how the refusal to contemplate prudent fiscal policy is draining the nation's coffers and impacting growth and opportunity. The party isn't just out of touch, the leadership is actively promoting an agenda that is curtailing the nation's future.

Who did you vote for in November?

It wasn't Romney. The winds of the Hell of Being Flayed Alive will still and stall before that will happen. He was a poor choice for the Primary in 2008, and he was an even poorer choice in 2012.

McCain lost my vote in 2008, despite getting it in the Primary, because he went not just odd, but absolutely loopy. His response to Ossetia was a symptom of not being aware of real conditions outside the US. Coupled with the poor decision tree in putting Palin on the ticket, I had to vote for Obama, because there was no way in Hells I wanted McCain near the White House. Romney shouldn't have been Governor of the state of Massachusetts, and in fairness, my antipathy for him goes back to my college days, and his involvement with the UMaine system, before he headed out to Utah to play with the Olympics. By the time the Primary rolled around to Mass, Johnson had removed himself from the running for the GOP, and that saddened me a great deal, because he was the better choice for the ticket, even though his economic policy is idealistic and naive. The Primary this last time around, was less about putting forward a good candidate, as much as suckering cash from rubes on a huge field, and the only real winners were PACs and those dedicated to streaming cash from campaigns to hands who would profit from anger.

The party is sick right now. Not just the obstructionism in the Congress, but the party has to figure out if using anger and vitriol to further an economic agenda that really puts the middle class on an ice floe is worth it. The cash from the Religious Right and the Idiot Brigade is nice, but it means putting in planks on the platform that run entirely counter to sound economic and the principles of this nation. I had hopes that the party would come to its sense after McCain lost, but instead they doubled down on the DERP and threw away efficient spending and taxation for some mixed message "clarion call" to the faithful, and it is growing even worse after Romney's loss. I haven't changed my stances on efficient taxation and regulation, but the party has shifted further and further from those principles, and given the leadership's stricter policies for staying in lockstep, I can't in good conscience support their vision. Here and there ARE good candidates, but they are growing fewer and far between. In the end, it comes down to voting for the candidate with best vision, and damn the initial after that name, but lately, it's growing harder and harder to find Republicans who are worth the effort. Snowe is retiring--and I was glad to work on her campaign back in the day--and there are just too many ideologues who are seeking office, as opposed to folks who want to pull up their sleeves and work at solutions.

I love that the advice to Republicans is always to look at the reality of their situation. This is the party that hates science, i.e. the practice of looking at reality systematically and rationally, so I don't think that's advice they're capable of taking even if they tried.

The GOP is really caught in a bind. The elite care for nothing but shoveling more money to rich people. They've used racial and cultural resentment and tribalism to scare up votes for 40 years. But demographic changes and the universe's long moral arc are slowly evaporating the majority they once commanded.

You can always quit a job and work for someone else. It's much harder to quit your government.

/Don't argue from the extremes.

There are more options than "authoritarian capitalism" and "authoritarian communism". Profit-seeking private business vs. government is a completely false dichotomy (and is a very good summation as to why right-wing "libertarians" are authoritarians who stole their name from a bunch of French anarchists as a cover).

Solkar:hubiestubert: It's not just college kids, folks. Unless the party purges the Crazy Train, they're not going to get my vote either, and I'm in my early 40s. At this point, it's not just the social issues, but how economic issues are used to further those social issues, and how the refusal to contemplate prudent fiscal policy is draining the nation's coffers and impacting growth and opportunity. The party isn't just out of touch, the leadership is actively promoting an agenda that is curtailing the nation's future.

Not that a lot Libertarians are any better. The typical Libertarian candidate today promotes an agenda that is naught but a brand of NeoFeudalism that is even worse than their Republican counterparts. I had hopes for the Modern Whigs, but the TEA Party nonsense pretty much ate up their momentum, which is exactly what it was designed to do. The sad fact is, many Libertarians are just Republicans who want to smoke pot, and that is not the basis for real progress. We need better thinking, not just the same old, with a few whistles and bells to draw in the unwary...

Ah, good to see all the Fark libs and conservatives hating on the LP. Republicans hate us because of our social liberalism and Democrats hate us because of our fiscal conservatism. Both sides do everything they can to exclude the LP (and the Green Party) from the process. Why? Fear. A party that promotes social liberalism, fiscal conservatism, personal responsibility and smaller government will resonate with voters.

FTFA: Sophomore Miranda Onnen says after graduation, fiscal realities will begin to take hold for her generation and priorities will shift. "We're also the ones who are going to have to pay for Obamacare," Onnen says. "A lot of people don't necessarily connect those things. They say, 'Oh, well, health care is great. I get to be on my parents' health-care plan until I'm 26.' Well, once you turn 27, you have to pay for that. And especially with the joblessness rates being what they are, I think that's going to hit kids our age pretty hard."

What does a sophomore at Ohio State University know about the financial situation of life? Nothing. Mommy and daddy or John Q. Public is paying for her way right now.

Guess what kid? I don't want to pay for your education, healthcare, protection or social services either over the course of your life, but I did, because I want to live in a 1st world society and not some 3rd world libertarian shiat-hole.

slayer199:Ah, good to see all the Fark libs and conservatives hating on the LP. Republicans hate us because of our social liberalism and Democrats hate us because of our fiscal conservatism. Both sides do everything they can to exclude the LP (and the Green Party) from the process. Why? Fear. A party that promotes social liberalism, fiscal conservatism, personal responsibility and smaller government will resonate with voters.

"Libertarians" are a bunch of authoritarian corporatist gasbags who pay lipservice to social issues as a vote-getting strategy.

GoldSpider:If the Republican Party stood by it's professed tenets of limited government, there wouldn't be a need for a Libertarian Party.

The seem to have forgotten that limited government applies to individuals and not just the size of government...though really, the GOP likes expanding the government as well..more on the police state side.

And even then, "Libertarian" is often just a stop on the road to outright "liberal." It'll probably take just a couple more years of college (and if not by then, certainly grad school) for some of these kids to realize that libertarianism is just a big of a crock as regular old Republicanism.